The dark side of hedonistic, rite-of-passage holidays is explored in this authentic and unnerving consent-themed drama, featuring a gutsy, star-making turn from lead Mia McKenna-Bruce. Winner of the Un Certain Regard award at this year’s Cannes, How To Have Sex is the formidable feature debut of Molly Manning Walker, who worked as a cinematographer on another recent British gem, Scrapper.

When Tara (McKenna-Bruce), Skye (Lara Peake, who worked with Walker on TV’s Mood) and Em (Enva Lewis) take a trip to Malia ahead of receiving their GCSE results, they can’t wait to get cracking on the fun in the sun. Getting laid is a vocal priority, particularly for virgin Tara. After holding each other’s hair back over toilets and bonding with cheesy chips, the girls join up with another trio in an apartment across the way, including Samuel Bottomley’s Paddy and Shaun Thomas’ Badger, before things take an ugly turn.

The actresses don’t exactly pass for wide-eyed teenagers, but they make a likeably lairy bunch, with the luminous McKenna-Bruce conveying a heartbreaking vulnerability, as we see this effervescent chatterbox nervously negotiate the meat market before crushingly shrinking into her shell. The film is strikingly lensed by director of photography Nicolas Canniccioni and features an appropriately banging soundtrack; the way it fluidly captures the exhilaration and recklessness of youth recalls Andrea Arnold’s masterful American Honey. 

Walker manages the shift in tone well, from the girls’ initial, carefree hi-jinks to the grotty and distressing reveal, aligning us closely with Tara’s woozy, increasingly disillusioned gaze as she drinks and dances through the discomfort, and finds herself isolated in rooms heaving with bodies. Beautiful, euphoric and tragic, How To Have Sex is brimming with compassion about how tough it is to be a teen.

How To Have Sex is in cinemas from Friday 3 November.